“She’s a tough bitch, you know, hard as nails. Everyone knew how much her old man depended on her—gave him more alibis than you’ve had hot dinners, mate.”
Donaldson became quite cocky as he told them how Dolly had promised he’d get a nice reward for keeping her property safe.
“So where are they, Jimmy?” asked Craigh.
Donaldson pursed his lips. “Well, that would be telling. I mean, you gonna let me see my wife?”
Craigh became tougher, prodding him with his finger. “We make the deals, Jimmy, not you. You’re lucky we’re not gonna slap more years on for not coming out with this at your trial.”
“Fuckin’ hell, you bastards, you just been stringing me along. Well, no more, no way, I retract everythin’ I said, I dunno anythin’.”
The truth was that Craigh was in no position to offer a deal until he had spoken to the prison authorities and to Donaldson’s parole officer to see if they could get him moved. Mike was eager for them to make any promise and he was the one who asked Donaldson if Dolly Rawlins had contacted him since she had been in Holloway.
“No, never—she’s not stupid. But a few times I sort of felt a finger on the back of the neck, so to speak.”
Donaldson never divulged that Dolly Rawlins had quite a hold over him because of all the other times he had fenced stolen gear for her husband, knowing he could be put away for a lot longer than five years. Now he felt a bit of relief because they seemed to want to put her away again and it would mean he was free of her.
Mike Withey was also relieved. At no point had Donaldson mentioned the part his own mother, Audrey, had played.
“How is she going to collect the diamonds?”
“Well, she’ll call me. She was never arrested or charged for that gig, was she? I mean, nobody knows she’s got them, do they?” Still not knowing the location of the diamonds, Craigh and Palmer talked it over with the Super and decided to take Donaldson to his home and give it a few days to see if Rawlins made contact.
Once Donaldson knew he was going home to see his wife—even if a police officer would be with him at all times—he told them where the stones were hidden. His wife still ran his junk and antique shop and the main wall had a four-brick hideaway; if they removed the bricks, they would find the gems.
Craigh and Palmer high-fived each other, thinking of the big reward for the return of the stones. Mike was more pleased about the fact that, if Donaldson handed the diamonds over to Dolly, they could send her straight back to prison. Rest in peace, Shirley Miller.
Dolly stood outside her old house in Totteridge. She stared at the new curtains, the fresh paint. For the twenty years of her marriage this was where she had lived. She had always been house-proud, and had done her best to make it into a place Harry would be proud of. Harry entertained regularly and she had always set a nice table with good, home-cooked food. She had thought she was happy, had believed he was too. As she stood there now, thinking of his betrayal, she clenched her hands, trying not to break down, refusing to after all these years. He had forced her into a grief-driven fury—she had even buried him when all the time he had been alive. Alive and cheating on her. It was so bizarre, so insane what she had done, what she had become. And even when he had faced her, knowing that she knew everything, he had still been so sure of her love that he had opened his arms and said, “I love you, Doll.”
She had pulled the trigger then, almost nine years ago. She had served the sentence for his murder and now she was free. She walked back to the waiting chauffeur and he opened the car door. Dolly had sold the house and all its contents for a lot of money through her lawyers, and now wanted to go to the bank to collect enough to buy herself a small flat.
“That was my home,” she said softly.
He helped her inside the car.
“Now it’s someone else’s.” She sounded so sad, but she suddenly gave him a sweet smile.
“Can I use this portable phone, then?”
Ester grabbed the phone after two rings, knowing it had to be Dolly. She’d got a new number when the phone had been reconnected and only Dolly knew it. She listened for a moment, then put the phone down. Dolly was on her way. Ester sighed with relief and then hurried into the dining room.
The table was almost ready but Gloria and Kathleen were having a go at each other. “She’s drinking, Ester. I keep telling her not to get pissed.”
Ester snatched up one of the bottles, recorked it and banged it onto the table as Kathleen shouted that all she was doing was getting them ready for the decanters. “She’s on her way, and as soon as those lads are finished we’d all better have a talk, get sorted. She’s not stupid so we got to make this look good. Where’s Connie?”
“I’m here. I’ve been repairing my nails. I’ve chipped two already—they’re not supposed to be in too much water, you know.”
Gloria raised her eyes to heaven as Connie showed off her false-tipped nails. Ester told her to start bringing up extra chairs from the basement. She had to show her the way and as they walked down the hall, Connie pulled her to one side. “What were they in prison for?”
Ester told her that Gloria had been in for a long stretch for fencing stolen guns and Kathleen was in for forgery and kiting.
“And what about Julia? What was she in for?”
Gloria appeared. “The Doc was in for sellin’ prescriptions. She was a junkie.”
Connie flushed with embarrassment.
“I heard you, Ester. I wasn’t done for the guns, that was a total frame-up. I was stitched up,” Gloria said.
Ester sighed, already sick and tired of Gloria. She ushered Connie to the cellar door, which led down to the sauna, the steam room and the old laundry. There was also a gymnasium, and there were showers and changing cubicles, all from the days when the manor had been a health farm.
Connie went down to inspect the chairs as most of the ones in the dining room were broken. Confronted by banks of mirrors, she couldn’t resist looking at herself and pouting, then jumped when Julia asked what she was doing in her droll voice. Connie squinted in the semi-darkness, looking over the stack of chairs. “I love to work out, I do it whenever I can—it’s like a fix.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out . . .”
“I know what you meant,” Julia said. “You worked for Ester, right? What were you, then?”
“I’m a model. I don’t do any of that kind of thing now, not anymore.”
Julia smiled. “Well, I don’t use drugs, and you’re not selling that lovely body, so we both seem to have improved our lives, don’t we?”
Julia turned and left and Connie sighed. She hated it when anyone assumed she had been a prostitute. But that was what she had been, like it or not. Then when Lennie, who she had trusted, who she believed had loved her, had tried to make her go back on the game it had really hurt because she had dreamed of one day being a model, a proper one, one that kept her clothes on. She had written to agents and now, with all the work done on her face, she reckoned she might even get a TV commercial. She had big plans for herself: she would have a big-time photographer do a good contact sheet, send out a portfolio. She was sure she had a chance. Lennie had laughed and told her she was too old, told her that was the reason he had paid for her surgery, so she could make some money on her back, but she had refused.
Connie sat down on one of the dusty chairs and started to cry. He never touched her face, at least he didn’t ruin that, but her body was still covered in bruises. She had said she would do whatever he wanted, if he just left her alone. The following morning Ester had called, not to ask her to go on the game as she had first thought, but to give her a chance of making a lot of money. Connie had immediately thrown a few things into a case and done a runner. She knew Lennie would be going crazy, knew he would be out looking for her: he’d want his money back for the surgery at the very least, but Ester had said that she’d have more money than she would know what to do with. She hoped Ester was
right. Connie had never really met Dolly Rawlins.
“What the hell are you doin’ down here?” Gloria suddenly yelled.
Connie picked up the chair and brushed past her.
“You see any big trays around here? Ester said we need one,” Gloria added.
Connie hadn’t, so Gloria began to sort through the odd bits and pieces of furniture in the gym. She sighed when she caught her dirt-streaked reflection. Then she inspected the black roots of her hair. She needed a tint badly; she had to have it done before she went to see Eddie.
Eddie Radford was serving eighteen years for arms dealing and armed robbery. He was going to be away for so long that sometimes Gloria wondered if it was worth going back and forth to the prisons. He’d spent most of their marriage in one or another. To be honest, they were two bad pennies, as she had been in and out for this and that since she was a teenager. But Eddie was trouble—she’d known it when she first met him. He was even worse than her first husband. Now he’d got a stash of weapons hidden at their old house with two of his bastard friends trying to get them. She had no money but Eddie kept telling her he’d arrange a deal, that she just had to sit tight and wait until he’d made the contact. Gloria was behind with the rent, and the council had told her to leave. It seemed like everyone was always telling her what to do and it always ended up a mess. She was scared of sitting on such a big stash of guns, scared of his so-called contacts and she was sick to death of always being on the move, always looking over her shoulder in case one of Eddie’s friends tracked her down.
When Ester had called, it had been like a breath of fresh air. The thought of getting away from that pressure, away from Eddie’s bloody heavies, was intoxicating. And with the promise of big money tied in with it, who could refuse?
Ester checked the table. It was looking good. As it grew darker it got harder to see the dilapidation, and she had bought boxes of candles and incense sticks, plus room sprays, so gradually the stench of mildew was disappearing. Gloria said it smelt like someone had farted in a pine forest.
The food had been delivered on big oval throwaway platters, and all they had to do was heat it up. The Aga was on, the boiler was working and fires were lit in the dining room and drawing room. Julia had cut logs and carried them in, and slowly the firelight and the candlelight had given warmth to the old house. The kids from the job center had gone and only the women remained. Ester shouted for them all to meet up and have a confab as Dolly would be arriving in a couple of hours.
The doorbell rang and Ester swore, looking at her watch. It couldn’t be her yet . . . Then she remembered Angela.
“You took your bloody time getting here. I said this afternoon. It’s almost six,” she snapped.
Angela dumped her overnight bag. “I had to bleedin’ walk all the way from the station, it took hours. And I missed the train so I had to wait . . .” She looked at the bank of candles. “Eh, this looks great, I thought it was wrecked.”
“It was, it is, we’ve done a good bandage job.”
Angela hadn’t seen the old house for years, not since it was busted, so she was impressed by the big floral displays in the hall, the banisters gleaming from the hours Kathleen had spent polishing.
Gloria walked out from the dining room and glared at Angela. “Who’s this? What’re you doing?”
Ester said that Angela was a friend who had come to serve the dinner.
“Oh yeah? We cut this any more ways and there’s not gonna be much to go round, you know.”
Ester pushed Gloria against the wall. “She doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t know Dolly and she’s not in for a cut. She gets fifty quid to wait on us at dinner. Now will you get the others in the dining room so we can have a talk?”
Angela went into the kitchen. Ester pointed to what food needed heating, what was to be served cold and showed her the low oven of the Aga for the plates to be heated. Angela looked around, nodding, then trailed after Ester to the dining room.
“There’s a room ready for you. Dump your bag. Did you bring a black dress and an apron?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Angela with a little curtsy.
“Okay, all of you read these.” Ester handed round old newspaper clippings she had Xeroxed about the diamond raid: there were photographs of Dolly Rawlins after the shooting of her husband and several of Shirley Miller.
“Holy shit, you read this?” said Gloria. “‘Diamonds worth more than five million were last night stolen in a daring raid.’”
Julia grabbed the clippings. “Gloria, we can read it for ourselves, okay?”
Gloria picked up another. “Fuckin’ hell, listen to this, ‘Harry Rawlins was last night shot at point-blank range by his wife. His body was discovered in a lake in—’”
Julia snatched it from her. “Shut up, just shut up.”
Kathleen looked at Ester. “This was some raid. Did she set it up? Dolly?”
“She was never shopped for it if she did.”
Gloria frowned. “This was no doodle at Woolworth’s. Look at the gear they got away with, and guns. See this?” She held up a cutting. “‘Shirley Miller, aged twenty-one, was shot and killed during a terrifying armed raid that took place at a fashion show last night. The models were wearing over ten million pounds’ worth of diamonds . . .’”
Julia glanced at Ester in exasperation. She had had to put up with Gloria reading aloud when they had shared the same prison cell and she was about to make her shut up when Ester stopped them all short.
“If they were worth ten million nearly nine years ago, you can double the value now. Even if Dolly didn’t get the motherload.”
Kathleen whistled in awe. Gloria’s face was puckered in concentration. “I mean, I know there were rumors, Ester, but, like, she might have started them. How can you be sure she’s really got these diamonds?”
“Because nobody ever found them after the raid.”
“That don’t mean she got ’em,” said Gloria.
Julia sighed. “Let’s take it that she does have them.”
“Okay, she’s got them, and now she’s out and she’s coming here tonight.”
“Right. She’s coming here, to be with friends, and that’s what we are going to be for her, dear old friends,” said Ester.
Gloria shook her head. “You must be joking. She don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Gloria, will you keep it shut for ten minutes and fucking listen to me?” Ester ran her hands through her hair. “I know she has no one, had no visitors. She’s going to be very lonely, even frightened, so we make her welcome, we make her have a great night . . .”
Gloria nodded. “Then what? When do we get our hands on the stones?”
“None of you, not one of you, mentions diamonds. We just want her to feel like we’re her friends, that she can trust us. She might need a good fence—Kathleen knows plenty. She might have trouble getting the stones—Gloria’s got contacts. She will need us, you understand? Above all, we make her trust us. When she tells us about the diamonds, we go for them, we take them if we feel like it, and we share them between us.”
“The five of us?” asked Gloria.
“Yes, Gloria, the five of us, or six—”
“Who’s the sixth, then? Not that little black chick you got in for the nosh?”
“No, Gloria, Angela is not the sixth, but I reckon Dolly might want a cut of her own gear.”
“Well, if I was her I’d just say piss off. I mean, why give us a cut?”
Ester sighed, beginning to think the whole thing was turning into a fiasco, when Connie suddenly giggled. “Five million! Oh, yes!”
They all started to laugh and Ester decided it was time to break it up and told them to start getting changed: Dolly was on her way and would be there within the hour. Like kids they trooped out.
Julia began to rub Ester’s neck, feeling the tension. “I hope to God this works, Julia, and works fast, because I don’t think I could stand more than a few hours cooped up with that blood
y Gloria Radford.”
Julia cupped Ester’s face in her hands and kissed her lips. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. If anyone can pull it off, you can. I just hope there really are diamonds. It could all be a fantasy—you know that, don’t you, darling?”
Ester gripped her wrists. “No. There’s diamonds, believe me, I know it. And I know that bitch has got them somewhere . . . and we’ll get them away from her and then . . .”
Julia stepped back. “Then?” she said softly.
“I’m free, Julia. I’ll be free. No bastard trying to slit my throat. I’ll even airmail their wretched tape back to them. With all those millions I won’t need to grovel or beg from anyone. I don’t reckon in all honesty I’ve ever in my life been free but this time I will be.”
“I hope for your sake you get them, then. I love you, Ester.”
Ester was already walking out of the room. She didn’t hear or if she did she pretended not to. Alone, Julia looked round the once magnificent room. Maybe Dolly would be taken in if she didn’t look too carefully, if she didn’t see the cracks, if she believed that Ester was her friend, all of them were her friends. Julia sighed. In some ways she felt sorry for Dolly Rawlins because she was walking into a snake pit and she was ashamed to be a part of it.
The candles threw shadows on the wall and she raised her hand to make a silhouette of a bird flying, flapping its wings. Dolly Rawlins’s first day of freedom in eight years. Julia watched the shadow bird flutter and then broke the shadow as she moved her hands away from the candle. Ester had planned this evening carefully, each one of them chosen because they were desperate, herself included. She was desperate not to lose Ester, desperate to safeguard the lies she had told her ailing elderly mother, lies she had spun round her arrest and prison sentence. Julia’s mother didn’t know her daughter the doctor was an ex-drug addict, that she had been struck off and for the last four years had been in prison. She had arranged an elaborate charade via friends who passed Julia’s letters written in Holloway to look as if they were sent from abroad. Julia’s mother had never suspected her daughter was leading a double life, just as she had no notion that her daughter could or would be deeply in love with another woman. It was beyond her comprehension, and Julia was determined her mother would never know. Keeping up the pretense had taken money, and still took every penny she could lay hands on, as she paid all her mother’s bills. Julia needed those diamonds just like the rest of them. The only difference was, she was ashamed of the awful con they were all about to begin on Dolly Rawlins.
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